Add a little colour to your design

Colour Lovers is a site dedicated to color and its use in design, marketing trends, and art. They have over 160,000 users who post color palettes dissected and extracted from such subjects as crayons, national brand logos, and even fall leaves. They watch market trends of popular color usage in logo, web design, fashion, you name it. They even have a post that shows a side by side comparison of what a color blind person sees next to the original artwork.

Users post patterns and palettes inspired by vintage fabric, masterpieces by famous artists, or just a season of the year. Each provides the RGB number equivalent to be able to easily utilize it yourself. Many of the patterns available for download could be a great start in designing your own personal digital fabric or wallpaper.

It is a wealth of information and inspiration for any designer. Likewise, people in the marketing and advertising industry can learn what colors have been successful for other big name companies when developing their campaign or brand. A great site, worth spending some time exploring.

Custom wall coverings make a big impact

Savvy designers are discovering the potential in custom wall coverings. Not only for corporate users, but also for home decor. The versatility of the product combined with the designer's vision make the possibilities endless.

This wall covering was designed by LA Digital Graphics for a Paul Mitchell salon studio in San Francisco. They used a self adhesive vinyl product for this installation.

Digital wallpaper also offers the same freedom for customization. Designers are able to work directly with their client to create a one of a kind setting that is unique to their taste.


Excerpt from the November issue of Digital Graphics magazine article by Sharla Sikes

Why Not Wallpaper?

Digitally printed wall coverings offer a lot of advantages over traditional wallpaper, which helps to drive their growing popularity.

"You can offer short-run customization without the huge expense of setup. Machine printing is extremely expensive in that world, and they have to do larger runs. It's more cost effective to do it digitally. With new technology we now have permanent inks and eco-friendly products - that's a big thing now," says Kirsh...[Aaron Kirsch of Aztek Wallcoverings Inc. uses a UV curable printer similar to ours at Mighty Imaging.]

Traditional wallpaper is more limited in terms of design. With digitally produced murals or wall coverings, the customer and designer can work together to create not just a design but an environment that reflects the look and feel the customer wants.

Creating custom repeating patterns

PS Hero is a site dedicated to Photoshop tutorials. In this tutorial they give a simple step by step on how to create your own custom repeating pattern by using the Custom Shape Tool. If you would like more choices than what is standard in Photoshop, they even have links posted for free custom shapes available for download.

Although the tutorial was not written with this in mind, we thought another great use of this technique would be to create your own wallpaper design for your home, office, or studio. The possibilities are endless, and what a great way to add a subtle touch and personalize your space.

Creating Custom Patterns

In this Photoshop tutorial we will explore the wonderful world of repeating patterns while creating one from scratch using a Photoshop Custom Shape.

Light streaks in Photoshop

Spoon Graphics is a blog dedicated to all things graphic. They have some great tutorials and resources posted for photographers, graphic artists, or anyone who enjoys creating in a digital environment. This tutorial shows you how to create light streaks in Photoshop. They also have large resolution light streak files available for download if you want to take a short cut. Effects like this look amazing when printed on the FujiFlex or Metallic papers.

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop:

A couple of Subscribers left their comment on a previous post that collated a range of inspiring graphic artwork from digital artists across the world. The commentors asked how the light stream effect on some of the pieces was created. I did a little research and picked up a couple of tips from similar tutorials to present a walkthrough on how to create intense light streaks flowing around an object or person.

Visual art in advertising

As we talked about in our previous post Shop with your eyes, consumers are very visual when it comes to advertising and what motivates them to buy that product. A new study released by the University of Georgia expands this point further. They found that when art is used in conjunction with the product you are trying to sell it is subconsciously perceived by the consumer as being more 'luxurious'. Use this psychology to your advantage when designing the graphics for your campaign.

Visual Art Can Boost Advertising, Study Says: by ARTINFO

ATHENS, Ga.—A new University of Georgia study has found that exposure to visual art in advertising, even if the exposure is fleeting, makes consumers evaluate products more positively, ScienceDaily.com reports. Researchers conducted three studies, including posing at a restaurant as waiters, showing 100 patrons sets of silverware in black velvet boxes with either a print of Vincent van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night or a photograph of a similar scene. Diners rated the silverware in the van Gogh boxes as more luxurious. The two other studies showed that "a relatively unfamiliar artwork can successfully compete with a famous celebrity in conveying a luxury appeal," and "the content of the specific artwork is not necessarily important, but that general connotations of art matter," according to ScienceDaily. Researchers said all of this points to art as a powerful marketing tool.

Turn your image in to vector art for free

VectorMagic, developed by Stanford University Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, is a free online service that will allow you to take any image and turn it in to vector art. If you have ever had to work with placing a logo that was way too small for your layout, this could be a lifesaver. Once you have your new vector image you can download it as an EPS and manipulate it as needed. Since it is now vector art, you can make it as big as you need to for your design or big enough to cover an entire wall. It can be used for photo, but you will loose detail. It takes on an animated kind of pop art type look. We have printed files prepared in a similar style on Metallic paper that looked incredible.

What is vectorization?

Vectorization (aka tracing) is the process of converting a raster image to a vector image.

Raster images are pixel-based, whereas vector image are represented by geometric shapes such as lines, circles and curves.

Helvetica and beyond

This poster would be a perfect addition to any graphic design office. Even if you can't read the language, I am sure you are familiar with Helvetica. It is a great collection that showcases the history of Swiss graphic design. The high-res pdf generously supplied for download can produce a pretty large poster. Hmmm....I think I might know a place that could print it for you. [Found via Creative Review]

89 Swiss Poster Posted by Xavier Encinas (on the Swiss Legacy blog)

Last year when Richard Hollis released his new book, Swiss Graphic Design: The Origins and Growth of an International Style, 1920–1965, Jannuzzi Smith organised a presentation, discussion forum, and book launch. For this occasion, Jannuzzi Smith designed a poster using all the illustrations of the book. A very useful tool to have always around.

Typographics

This video put together by Ryan Uhrich and Marcos Ceravolo at the Vancouver Film School is a entertaining illustration on how typography is used in design. The placement of text is a key part of what makes an effective visual graphic. If done wrong, the impact and your emphasis are lost. It is a well done piece and good review whether you are a graphic designer, in advertising & marketing, or just watching for fun.